Legendary Items, which were introduced to the game with the Mines of Moria expansion have been a hot topic for the Lord of the Rings Online community ever since, and the developers at Turbine have responded to player feedback in this latest developer diary posted on the game's official website. The dev diary details a number of major improvements coming to the Legendary Item system, which will make their debut when the new digital expansion "Siege of Mirkwood" launches this December.

The most significant of the upcoming changes is the ability for players to assess a Legendary Item's potential before investing time into it:

Identification and Reforge Changes

One of the primary issues with the system is that players have to invest a large amount of time before knowing that a particular Legendary Item is “good.” We have changed the identification and reforge process to front load the system a bit more. The initial legacies placed on the Legendary Item (LI) at identification are pulled from only the “best” legacies. This ensures the LI has some desirable legacies and the player can make a good guess whether that LI is worthwhile before spending time leveling it.

Legendary Items will also feature a new avenue of advancement in addition to the typical leveling process with the introduction of "legendary item advancement scrolls". The scrolls will be available through the deconstruction process as well as loot drops, and will allow players to upgrade their legendary items even further. One example of these scrolls is the "Scroll of Empowerment", which will allow a player to upgrade the tier of any Legacy of their choice on one of their Legendary Items. Another scroll, the "Scroll of Renewal", will grant players the ability to "respec" their Legendary Items' legendary points to re-spend as they see fit.

Crafters will also get some love in the form of a fourth relic slot for Legendary Items that can only be slotted with special relics created through crafting. More info on that below:

Crafted Relics

Every legendary item now has a fourth relic slot. This slot will only hold a new type of relics that are not part of the relic combining system but are instead created by Crafters. Each craft can make relics that give a bonus to a particular stat, morale or power. In addition, all crafters can make Greater Crafted relics once they reach Supreme Master rank. These Greater Crafted relics can only be used by the Crafter that made them and give a small bonus to Melee, Ranged, Tactical or Healing skills.

Find out tons more by reading the full Dev Diary here.